Teaching Guitar to a Beginner .... what songs?

When I first started lessons my teacher used to have me bring in a tape or CD to one lesson every month, and then he'd help me figure out the song. I'm sure in retrospect he was helping me train my ear specifically for guitar, but at the time I was just excited to learn songs I liked rather than Zep or Dylan tunes which were okay but weren't what I was into at the time.

Also, there are a shit-ton of REM songs which are easy as hell to learn because the chords are common and most of them are open chords in standard tuning. So if REM is a little less creepy to pass on than Poison or Zep, that's a great place to start.

I don't know from popular music today. Sorry. Violent Femmes and REM were the things easy enough for me to learn back in the day.

After a year or so of teachers who taught me to play things they thought I should start with (Go tell aunt rhodie) I hooked up with a guy who's first question was "What's your favorite song?". Most of our lessons revolved around me bringing something to him and having him show me how to figure it out. He was a flamenco player and had usually never heard what I brought, which was cool because he'd be -very slightly- challenged by it too. When something was too hard for my little (12-year-old) hands he'd show me a way to cheat though it or we'd learn the bass part first. Anyway, he instantly boosted my desire to practice and clued me in on why it was worth learning some of the things that just seemed hard and boring. The other good point was that while I was learning the songs I was also learning how to figure them out for myself, so it was ear training at the same time. When we'd finish we'd write a tab. It de-mystified music for me in a good way. He liked pointing out how many of the songs were only slight variations of each other.

A few (less-patient and prone to quitting) people I've taught, I started with open tunings so they could get confidence in their right hands first and then start thinking about the lefts.

Bob Marley wrote a lot of simple, beautiful songs (real easy strum, yeah?) if your friend likes that.

Umm but yeah, just teach people Bob Dylan or something, they can amuse themselves by doing the voice funny while learning open-chord basics at the same time.

it's a little more fun to play than standard, i think, and most of the time whatever you play sounds good. i primarily play open, g and d - i barely remember how to play standard anymore. it was really useful when i was learning to play because it works well with the "i don't wanna take lessons and i think i'll just mess around and start writing songs" camp of guitar schoolin'.